Land deals in Chilliwack's protected farmland that were signed off on by the province's public utility are under investigation to determine if the transactions improved farming -- as required by provincial law, CTV News has learned.
Several deals by BC Hydro helped local farmers slice away pieces of their farms and sell them as residential property -- a lucrative deal for all involved but one that has attracted the attention of the Agricultural Land Commission, which guards protected farmland.
That's the same investigation that has targeted land deals involving B.C.'s former solicitor-general, John Les.
"It seemed fine at the time," said one of those farmers, Jeremy Wiebe, who said one deal helped raise money for his parents' retirement. "Lawyers were involved, BC Hydro was a government agency. It seemed legit."
BC Hydro says it does more than 1,000 property transactions each year, says it has not yet been contacted by the commission, and says is not aware of any investigation of its transactions.
"These transactions were completed more than six years ago, and it appears all of the proper processes were followed, including all applicable local and provincial rules and regulations," said spokesman Dag Sharman in an e-mail.
Some 4.7 million hectares in B.C. are included in the Agricultural Land Reserve, where farming is encouraged and non-farming uses are restricted. The area is administered by the Agricultural Land Commission.
It became public this spring that police were investigating then-Solicitor-General John Les over land deals in Chilliwack, and Les stepped down. He has denied any wrongdoing.
The commission also started its own investigation, asking the City of Chilliwack to forward to them any deals involving land in the Agricultural Land Reserve.
The commission's probe has included looking at boundary adjustments that sold farmland as residential property -- including farmland sold by certain Chilliwack schools and a transaction that created the property where John Les's house sits.
In BC Hydro's deal with Wiebe, the farmer says the company sold him title to a property along the Trans-Canada Highway and signed off on a boundary adjustment where Wiebe and Hydro created a two-acre residential lot on his farm.
Wiebe then sold the residential lot, the farmer said.
But Harold Steves, who helped create the Agricultural Land Reserve in the 1970s, said the deal turned farmland into a "country estate."
"I think that is dead wrong and should never have been considered," he said. "To take crown land and to use it to turn farmland into country estates, there's something wrong there from BC Hydro's perspective."
CTV News has found two other deals where BC Hydro sold titles to farmers that are also included in the investigation.
The Agricultural Land Commission refused to comment, saying that it will release information all at once when the investigation is complete.
The realtor on some of these land deals was John Les's brother, Corney Les. Les's brother also refused to comment.
"These are private deals and I'm not going to talk about them," he said.
Read part two of the investigation on Friday.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward
